a review on wireless body area network - … · a wireless body area network (wban) is the network...
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International Journal of Scientific Engineering and Research (IJSER) www.ijser.in
ISSN (Online): 2347-3878, Impact Factor (2014): 3.05
Volume 3 Issue 6, June 2015 Licensed Under Creative Commons Attribution CC BY
A Review on Wireless Body Area Network
Kiran1, Pooja Ahlawat
2
1M.tech Student, R. N. College of Engineering & Management, Maharshi Dayanand University, Rohtak, Haryana, India
2Associate Professor, Department of Computer Science and Engineering, R. . N. College of Engineering & Management, Maharshi
Dayanand University, Rohtak, Haryana, India
Abstract: WBAN is in recent trend due to its numerous applications in health monitoring. This paper studies the WBAN and its
architecture. Various applications along with difference between the WBAN and the WSN are also given in the paper. This paper
mainly focuses the various MAC issues available for WBAN. The paper also discusses the various works done in the WBAN field.
Keywords: WBAN, MAC, WSN, Base station, ECG
1. Introduction
A Wireless Body Area Network consists of small, intelligent
devices attached on or implanted in the body which are
capable of establishing a wireless communication link. These
devices provide continuous health monitoring and real-time
feedback to the user or medical personnel. Furthermore, the
measurements can be recorded over a longer period of time,
improving the quality of the measured data [1].
Generally speaking, two types of devices can be
distinguished: sensors and actuators. The sensors are used to
measure certain parameters of the human body, either
externally or internally. Examples include measuring the
heartbeat, body temperature or recording a prolonged
electrocardiogram (ECG). The actuators (or actors) on the
other hand take some specific actions according to the data
they receive from the sensors or through interaction with the
user. E.g., an actuator equipped with a built-in reservoir and
pump administers the correct dose of insulin to give to
diabetics based on the glucose level measurements.
Interaction with the user or other persons is usually handled
by a personal device, e.g. a PDA or a smart phone which acts
as a sink for data of the wireless devices. In order to realize
communication between these devices, techniques from
Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) and ad hoc networks
could be used. However, because of the typical properties of
a WBAN, current protocols designed for these networks are
not always well suited to support a WBAN.
A lot of research has investigated to physical layer. At the
beginning of WBAN research a number of authors proposed
Ultra Wide Band (UWB) as a physical layer for
WBANs.UWB has the advantage of low energy consumption,
good co-operation with existing wireless networks and a
range large enough to support the entire body. Due to
standardization issues and difficulties delivering the very high
speeds UWB does not progress well. As opposed to the wide
bands proposed by UWB, other researchers propose the
small, Industrial, Scientific and Medical (ISM) bands of the
IEEE 802.15.4 and IEEE802.15.6. Current most working
WBAN prototypes are based on ISM bands.
WBAN Architecture
Figure 1 shows secure 3-level WBAN architecture for
medical and non-medical applications. Level 1 contains in-
body and on-body BAN Nodes (BNs) such as
Electrocardiogram (ECG) – used to monitor electrical activity
of heart, Oxygen saturation sensor (SpO2) –used to measure
the level of oxygen, and Electromyography (EMG) – used to
monitor muscle activity [3].
Level 2 contains a BAN Network Coordinator (BNC) that
gathers patient’s vital information from the BNs and
communicates with the base-station. Level 3 contains a
number of remote base-stations that keep patient’s
medical/non-medical records and provides relevant
(diagnostic) recommendations. The traffic is categorized into
on demand, emergency, and normal traffic. On-demand traffic
is initiated by the BNC to acquire certain information.
Emergency traffic is initiated by the BNs when they exceed a
predefined threshold. Normal traffic is the data traffic in a
normal condition with no time critical and on-demand events.
Figure 1: Secure 3-Level WBAN Architecture for Medical
and Non-Medical Applications
The normal data is collected and processed by the BNC. The
BNC contains a wakeup circuit, a main radio, and a security
circuit, all of them connected to a data interface. The wakeup
circuit is used to accommodate on-demand and emergency
traffic. The security circuit is used to prevent malicious
interaction with a WBAN.
Difference between WSN and WBAN
The following illustrates the differences between a Wireless
Sensor Network and a Wireless Body Area Network:
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International Journal of Scientific Engineering and Research (IJSER) www.ijser.in
ISSN (Online): 2347-3878, Impact Factor (2014): 3.05
Volume 3 Issue 6, June 2015 Licensed Under Creative Commons Attribution CC BY
Deployment and Density:
The number of sensor/actuator nodes deployed by the user
depends on different factors. Typically, BAN nodes are
placed strategically on the human body, or are hidden under
clothing. In addition, BANs do not employ redundant nodes
to cope with diverse types of failures—an otherwise common
design provision in conventional WSNs. Consequently,
BANs are not node-dense. WSNs however, are often
deployed in places that may not be easily accessible by
operators, which require that more nodes be placed to
compensate for node failures.
Data Rate:
Most WSNs are employed for event based monitoring, where
events can happen at irregular intervals. By comparison,
BANs are employed for registering human’s physiological
activities and actions, which may occur in a more periodic
manner, and may result in the applications’ data streams
exhibiting relatively stable rates.
Latency:
This requirement is dictated by the applications, and may be
traded for improved reliability and energy consumption.
However, while energy conservation is definitely beneficial,
replacement of batteries in BAN nodes is much easier done
than in WSNs, whose nodes can be physically unreachable
after deployment. Therefore, it may be necessary to maximize
battery life-time in a WSN at the expense of higher latency.
Mobility:
BAN users may move around. Therefore, BAN nodes share
the same mobility pattern, unlike WSN nodes that are usually
considered stationary [2].
WBAN Applications
WBANs have great potential for several applications
including remote medical diagnosis, interactive gaming, and
military applications. Table 1 shows some of the in-body and
on body applications [4]. In-body applications include
monitoring and program changes for pacemakers and
implantable cardiac defibrillators, control of bladder function,
and restoration of limb movement [5]. On-body medical
applications include monitoring heart rate, blood pressure,
temperature, and respiration. On-body non-medical
applications include monitoring forgotten things, establishing
a social network, and assessing soldier fatigue and battle
readiness. The following part discusses some of the WBAN
applications:
WBAN MAC Requirements
Most important attribute of a good MAC protocol for a
WBAN is energy efficiency. The device should support a
battery life of months or years without intervention, as others
may require a battery life of only tens of hours due to the
nature of the applications. E.g., cardiac defibrillators and
pacemakers should have a lifetime of more than 5 years, as
swallow able camera pills have a lifetime of 12 hours [6].
Power-efficient and flexible duty cycling techniques are
required to minimize the idle listening, packet collisions,
overhearing and control packet overhead problems.
Additionally, low duty cycle nodes should not receive
frequent synchronization and control information (beacon
frames) if they have no data to send or receive.
WBAN MAC should support simultaneous operation on in-
body is called Medical Implant Communications Service
(MICS) and on-body frequency bands/channels [Industrial,
Scientific and Medical (ISM) or Ultra Wide Band (UWB)] at
the same time. It means, that should support Multiple
Physical layers (Multi-PHYs) communication. The important
factors are scalability and adaptability to changes in the
network, throughput, bandwidth utilization and delay. The
position of the human body network topology, the node
density and the position of the human body should be handled
rapidly and successfully. MAC protocol for a WBAN should
consider the electrical properties of the human body and the
diverse traffic nature of in-body and on-body nodes.
Example, the data rate of in-body nodes varies and ranging
from few kbps in pacemaker to several Mbps in capsular
endoscope. Figure 2, shows some of the potential issues of a
MAC protocol for WBANs.
Figure 2: Issues of MAC protocol for WBAN
MAC-Layer-Related Sensor Network Properties
Maximizing the network lifetime is a common objective of
sensor network research, sensor nodes are assumed to be dead
when they are out of battery. All these circumstances, the
MAC protocol must be energy efficient by reducing the
potential energy wastes [7].The types of communication
patterns that are observed in sensor network applications
should be investigated. All these patterns determine the
behavior of the sensor network traffic that has to be handled
by a MAC protocol.
Paper ID: IJSER15158 73 of 75
International Journal of Scientific Engineering and Research (IJSER) www.ijser.in
ISSN (Online): 2347-3878, Impact Factor (2014): 3.05
Volume 3 Issue 6, June 2015 Licensed Under Creative Commons Attribution CC BY
Table 1: In- Body and On- Body Sensor Networks Application
Application
Type Sensor Node Date Rate
Duty Cycle
(per device)%
per time
Power Consumption QOS (Sensitive
to Latency) Privacy
In-body
Applications
Glucose Sensor Few kbps <1% Extremely Low Yes High
Pacemaker Few kbps <1% Low Yes High
Endoscope Capsule >2Mbps <50% Low Yes Medium
On-body
Medical
Applications
ECG 3 Kbps <10% Low Yes High
SpO2 32 bps <1% Low Yes High
Blood Pressure <10 bps <1% High Yes High
On-body Non-
Medical
Applications
Music for Headsets 1.4 Mbps High Relatively High Yes Low
Forgotten Things
Monitor 256 Kbps Medium Low No Low
Social Networking <200 Kbps <1% Low No High
2. Related Work
Author Name Year Contribution Drawback
June S. Yoon et al. [18] 2010 Proposed PNP-MAC to provide QoS in BAN. PNP-MAC
supports QoS in accordance with priority of traffics.
Doesn’t consider any variation in
wireless links.
Majid Nabi et al. [19] 2010
Proposed a multi-hop protocol for human body health monitoring.
The protocol is robust against frequent changes of the network
topology due to posture changes, and variation of wireless link
quality.
Doesn’t consider mobility of the
patient.
Jocelyne Elias et al.
[20] 2012
Proposed a reliable topology design and provisioning approach for
Wireless Body Area Networks (named RTDP-WBAN) that takes
into account the mobility of the patient while guaranteeing a
reliable data delivery required to support healthcare applications’
needs.
Topology of the sensor nodes is
not considered.
Jocelyne Elias et al.
[21] 2012
addressed the topology design problem for Wireless Body Area
Networks, proposing a novel and effective model based on
mathematical programming that determines (1) the optimal
number and placement of relay nodes, (2) the optimal assignment
of sensors to relays, as well as (3) the optimal traffic routing,
taking accurate account of both the total network cost and energy
consumption
No cost function considered.
Q. Nadeem et al. [22] 2013 Proposed a mechanism to route data in Wireless Body Area
Networks (WBANs). Not energy efficient
N. Javaid et al. [23] 2013
Presented an analytically discussion about energy efficiency of
Medium Access Control (MAC) protocols for Wireless Body Area
Sensor Networks (WBASNs).
Ignore interference of the nodes
Anagha Jamthe et al.
[24] 2014 address the problems of intra and inter-WBAN interference Not adaptive.
3. Conclusion
A Wireless Body Area Network (WBAN) is the network of
low-powered devices for measuring and monitoring
physiological parameters such as Electrocardiogram (ECG),
blood pressure, Electromyography (EMG) etc. These devices
could be wearable or could be implanted inside the body. that
communicate wirelessly to a monitoring station known as the
Base Station. The limited number of nodes in a WBAN
environment gives us an opportunity to relax constraints in
routing protocols. Considering these constrains in mind,
existing have tried to improve the network life-time of the
network; energy of the network as well as the path loss of the
link being established between the nodes.
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Paper ID: IJSER15158 74 of 75
International Journal of Scientific Engineering and Research (IJSER) www.ijser.in
ISSN (Online): 2347-3878, Impact Factor (2014): 3.05
Volume 3 Issue 6, June 2015 Licensed Under Creative Commons Attribution CC BY
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Author Profile
Kiran received the B.Tech (Computer Science)
from Matu Ram Engineering and Management
College in 2013 and M.Tech degree in Computer
Science and Engineering from R. N. College of
Engineering & Management in 2015, respectively.
Paper ID: IJSER15158 75 of 75